Help Content: CFB Submission This module explains how to view a draft of a disclosure statement, submit a final statement to the CFB, and amend your CFB filings. It also explains how to submit monetary contribution refund documentation in response to a request from the CFB. Only the candidate and treasurer are allowed to submit disclosure statements, but anyone with C-SMART access may view a draft. SUBMIT DISCLOSURE TO THE CFB 1. Go to Submit Disclosure. Click Submission and then Submit Disclosure. 2. Generate a draft. Statement #: From the drop-down menu, select the statement number for the disclosure statement you are submitting. Committee: If your campaign has more than one CFB committee, select the applicable committee. Statements With Modified Transactions: This field displays past disclosure statements filed by your campaign for which you have modified at least one transaction. In order for the CFB to receive any changes you have made, you will need to file amendments for these disclosure statements. Before you submit the next disclosure statement filing, submit amendments for these statements, in order of oldest to newest. If you wish to review which transactions were modified, you should view the Modified Statements report from the Reports menu. Unitemized Amounts, Termination Report, & Initial Summary Information: If these are applicable to your campaign, enter the information and/or carefully review any information automatically populated by C-SMART. Before using these fields, confirm with your CSU liaison that they are applicable to your campaign. Click the Next button to proceed to a draft report. Pg. 1
C-SMART will warn you if you are attempting to submit a disclosure statement before the filing period has begun. If you are just reviewing a draft, you may ignore this warning. 3. Review the draft report. C-SMART will present the CFB Cover Sheet, which displays your committee information and totals for the reporting period. Review the Statement Inventory to confirm totals of all transactions. To view individual transactions, use the drop-down menu to select a particular schedule. Each schedule contains a different category of transactions. If you wish to print and/or save the Cover Sheet, Summary, and all schedules, click the Download Cover, All Schedules & Summary button. Or, if you wish to print and/or save particular transaction types, select the schedule(s) from the drop-down menu and use your browser s print and save functions. Closely review the draft before submitting the final statement and compare the information to the campaign s bank and other records to ensure the information is complete and accurate. Pg. 2
4. When you are ready to submit the final report, click Next. At this point, C-SMART will bring you to the Candidate/Treasurer Verification, Itemized Statement Verification, and Confirmation sections of the submission process. The candidate or treasurer must read and complete these fields in order to submit the statement. Once you have completed the verifications and confirmation, click Submit to submit the disclosure statement. Please allow a few moments for C-SMART to complete the submission process. Once completed, you will receive an on-screen message confirming that your report has been successfully submitted to the CFB. An email will also be sent to both the candidate and the treasurer confirming the submission. Click Download Cover, All Schedules & Summary if you wish to save and/or print your statement for your records. Pg. 3
For a filing to be considered on time, it must be submitted to the CFB no later than 11:59 PM on the disclosure statement due date. In order to receive a public funds payment within a four-day turnaround period, your disclosure statement and backup documentation must be filed with the CFB and accepted by close of business on the statement s due date. After you file with the CFB, you must separately file with the New York State Board of Elections using the Generate BOE Disclosure option in the Submission menu. SUBMIT AMENDMENT 1. Go to Submit Amendment. Click Submission and then Submit Amendment. You should submit amendments to the CFB only as part of your response to an audit review (e.g., statement review, draft audit report) or with your next disclosure statement filing. 2. Generate a draft. Statement #: From the drop-down menu, select the statement number for the disclosure statement for which you are submitting the amendment. Committee: If your campaign has more than one CFB committee, select the applicable committee. Statements With Modified Transactions: This field displays past disclosure statements filed by your campaign for which you have modified at least one transaction. In order for the CFB to receive any changes you have made, you will need to file amendments for those disclosure statements. Before you submit the next disclosure statement filing, Submit Amendments for these statements, in order of oldest to newest. If you wish to review which transactions were modified, you should select the Modified Statements report from the Reports menu. Unitemized Amounts, Termination Report, & Initial Summary Information: If these are applicable to your campaign, enter the information and/or carefully review any information automatically populated by C-SMART. Pg. 4
Click the Next button to proceed to a draft report. 3. Review the draft report. C-SMART will present the CFB Cover Sheet, which displays your committee information and totals for the reporting period. Review the Statement Inventory to confirm totals of all transactions. To view individual transactions, use the drop-down menu to select a particular schedule. Each schedule contains a different category of transactions. If you wish to print and/or save the Cover Sheet, Summary, and all schedules, click the Download Cover, All Schedules & Summary button. Or, if you wish to print and/or save particular transaction types, select the schedule(s) from the drop-down menu and use your browser s print and save functions. Closely review the draft before submitting the final statement and compare the information to the campaign s bank and other records to ensure the information is complete and accurate. 4. When you are ready to submit the amendment, click Next. At this point, C-SMART will bring you to the Candidate/Treasurer Verification, Itemized Statement Verification, and Confirmation sections of the submission process. The candidate or Pg. 5
treasurer must read and complete these fields in order to submit the statement. Once you have completed the verifications and confirmation, click Submit to submit the amendment. Please allow a few moments for C-SMART to complete the submission process. Once completed, you will receive an on-screen message confirming that your report has been successfully submitted to the CFB. An email will also be sent to both the candidate and the treasurer confirming the submission. Click Download Cover, All Schedules & Summary if you wish to save and/or print your statement for your records. Anytime you submit an amendment to the CFB, you must submit an amendment to the New York State Board of Elections using the Generate BOE Disclosure option in the Submission menu. Pg. 6
Unitemized Amounts, Termination Report, & Initial Summary Information These three categories appear on the CFB Disclosure Statement and CFB Disclosure Statement Amendment screens and only apply to campaigns in rare situations. If you are unsure whether they apply to your campaign, consult with your CSU liaison. If they do apply to you, be sure to enter the required information and carefully review any information automatically populated by C-SMART. Unitemized Amounts: These represent the value of small transactions that you have not entered into C-SMART. Termination Report: If your committee is terminating activities (after fulfilling any public funds repayment obligations and paying all liabilities) before the last disclosure statement of the election cycle is due, you should indicate this using the Termination Report section of the CFB Submission screen. Initial Summary Information: This section gives you the opportunity to set summary numbers in C-SMART for a particular disclosure statement. These numbers are included in your submissions or amendments and are required by the CFB if applicable. C-SMART does not calculate unitemized amounts for you. Unitemized Amounts For Schedules ABC and D: These include the value of small monetary and in-kind contributions that you have decided not to enter into C-SMART. These contributions will not be matchable. If you receive contributions of more than $100 from any contributor, you are required to itemize them. If you receive multiple contributions from the same contributor that exceed $100 in the aggregate, you must itemize the contribution that brings the total over $100 and all subsequent contributions. For Schedule E: These include the value of small receipts, other than contributions, that you have decided not to enter into C-SMART. If you receive more than $100 from any single source, you are required to itemize it. If you get multiple receipts from a single source that exceed $100 in the aggregate, you must itemize the receipt that brings the total over $100 and all subsequent receipts. For Schedule F: These include the value of small expenditures that you have decided not to enter into C-SMART. If you pay more than $50 to any vendor, you are required to itemize the expenditure. If you Pg. 7
make multiple payments to any vendor that exceed $50 in the aggregate, you must itemize the payment that brings the total over $50 and all subsequent payments. It is strongly recommended to enter itemized transactions in C-SMART regardless of the amount. Unitemized transactions bypass C-SMART s tracking of contribution totals and therefore hinder C-SMART s ability to facilitate your compliance. You still are required to keep all records related to unitemized transactions. Termination Report Termination Report: You must indicate whether or not this is a Termination Report by checking the Termination Report box. Date last liability paid: You must enter the date of the last liability paid, if applicable. Initial Summary Information It is strongly recommended that you use C-SMART to generate the Summary pages that you are required to submit to the CFB, NYC BOE, and NYS BOE by filling out the fields on the screen. If this is the first disclosure statement filed for a new committee, these opening numbers will all be $0. If this is the first disclosure statement you are filing using this version of C-SMART but not the first disclosure statement of the election cycle or if your committee was used in a prior election, these numbers should be available on the Summary pages that were submitted in the last disclosure statement for that committee. If you have filed a previous disclosure statement using this version of C-SMART, the software will estimate these values based on the results of the last filed submission or amendment. If you have already run a draft or final submission for this disclosure statement, the last numbers entered will remain in these fields. Any changes made to your data or to C-SMART may render incorrect the numbers on past Summary Information pages or in C-SMART. For example, if you amend your data on paper without including the changes in C-SMART, your summary numbers will be incorrect. Similarly, if you have not used C-SMART to generate prior disclosure statements, your summary numbers will be incorrect. You are responsible for checking the accuracy of these Summary Page numbers, even if they are provided by C-SMART. The Recalculate Summary feature is used to recalculate summaries kept in C-SMART. It recalculates starting with the opening numbers in each committee s first statement. Please make sure these opening numbers are accurate before running Recalculate Summary. It should be used if any of the summary numbers in any of the statements in C-SMART appear to be inaccurate, possibly resulting from a computer crash while you were running C-SMART. For more information, see Recalculate Summary. If you would like to enter information on your Summary Information manually, enter it in the Initial Summary Information section of the Submission or Amendment screens. Pg. 8
SUBMIT MONETARY CONTRIBUTION REFUND DOCUMENTATION TO THE CFB 1. Go to Submission and click on Contribution Refund Documentation Submission. 2. Select the contribution refund documentation you wish to submit. The first page of the submission process will list all of the monetary contribution refunds that have a Refund Category of Doing Business Response, Statement Review Response, or No Pay Response. If the documentation was not requested by the CFB, it will be submitted with your next regular disclosure statement filing. Select the transactions for which you are submitting the documentation or check Select All. Then, click Next. For assistance with uploading refund documentation to C-SMART, please see How to Add Monetary Contribution Refund Documentation. You can filter by refund category Doing Business Response, Statement Review Response, or No Pay Response to narrow your search. Once documentation has been submitted, the transaction will no longer appear on this screen. If your campaign has more than one committee, select the applicable committee from the drop-down menu. Pg. 9
3. Review the draft. Review the details of the contribution(s), refund(s), and documentation. Once you have ensured that you selected the necessary and applicable transactions, click Next. 4. Submit the documentation. At this point, C-SMART will bring you to the Candidate/Treasurer Verification, Itemized Statement Verification, and Confirmation sections of the submission process. The candidate or treasurer must read and complete these fields in order to submit the documentation. Once you have read and completed the verifications and confirmation, click Submit. Pg. 10
Please allow a few moments for C-SMART to complete the submission process. Once completed, you will receive an on-screen message confirming that your documentation has been successfully submitted to the CFB. In order to receive a public funds payment within a four-day turnaround period, your documentation (if in response to a No Pay Notice) must be submitted to and accepted by the CFB by 5:00 p.m. on the due date. Submitting refund documentation through this process does not submit the refund transaction(s). The data will be submitted with your next disclosure statement filing. Pg. 11